Andrew Mayne’s Station Breaker & Orbital deserve a place on your shelf – right now.
If you devoured Project Hail Mary and immediately started hunting for something that scratches the same itch, stop what you’re doing. We’ve got you covered: Andrew Mayne’s two-book series – Station Breaker and Orbital. This set is exactly the fix you’ve been looking for.
Astronaut David Dixon’s very first trip to space does not go as planned. Shots are fired aboard a Russian space station, and Dixon suddenly finds himself making an emergency re-entry on an untested inflatable heat shield… and landing as the most wanted man on Earth. From there, the story tears across the globe from Rio to the Mexican desert and back into low Earth orbit, with Dixon improvising, problem-solving, and generally doing things that should not be survivable.
Orbital picks up right where Station Breaker leaves off (seriously, treat them as one long read). Now tapped by a clandestine intelligence agency, Dixon goes undercover on an orbiting science platform to flush out a dangerous spymaster. It’s a fast-paced blend of space action and mystery thriller set in the fast-emerging aerospace age.
What Readers Are Saying
The reader comparisons basically write themselves. Goodreads reviewers have called it “Tom Clancy meets Gravity” and “the love child of The Martian and Jason Bourne” – and one went so far as to declare it “this is what science fiction was meant to be.”
One reviewer put it plainly: “Mayne’s books read clean – the dialog pops, and the scenes flow well.”
Who Is Andrew Mayne?
Well, he’s not your typical thriller writer. He is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, a Thriller Award finalist, and an Edgar Award finalist, but he’s also the star of the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week special Ghost Diver, where he swam alongside great white sharks using an underwater invisibility suit he designed himself. He’s worked behind the scenes with David Copperfield, Penn & Teller, and David Blaine, and currently serves as Science Communicator for OpenAI.
In other words: the man is genuinely, obsessively interested in how things actually work – and it shows on every page.
If You Like These, You’ll Love This
The Martian & Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir – real-science problem-solving under impossible pressure
The Jack Ryan series by Tom Clancy – geopolitical stakes, technical depth, propulsive pacing
Gravity (the film) – space as a genuinely terrifying and beautiful arena
The Naturalist series (also by Mayne) – if you want more of his voice after these two
Station Breaker and Orbital are available now in ebook (free to read in Kindle Unlimited), audiobook, and paperback. Get both and read them back to back. You’ll thank yourself.